The Internet is rapidly becoming a global community of information exchange. This growth in connectivity, coinciding with the evolution of hand held devices makes Internet connectivity and socialization a growing part of our immediate, every day lives. Evolving social networks, search engines and the ability to share personal opinion through community platforms are creating an increasing social complexity that is challenged by the dynamics of the Internet's open-source architecture. This requires certain systematic standards that can address the growing concerns with privacy, identity theft, credibility and fraudulent activity, while maintaining Internet effectiveness.
Within the context of a single social network, most people are familiar with the natural and free flowing exchanges and discussions that tend to develop. Whether the topic of discussion be that of endurance sports, surfing, pets, gardening, cooking, survival tactics, dating, wine & cheese or just about anything, there seem to be no shortage of people willing to offer comment and suggestion.
Yet the recipients or later readers of such a discussion are left entirely to their own assessment for evaluating who is and is not a valid contributor. More specifically, a comment about surfing locations, boards or wax may well be offered by a life time surfer who truly knows his or her stuff, or a land locked person who has never seen the ocean and despises the surfing culture. Though perhaps an extreme example, the issues of being able to authenticate a user as truly knowledgeable becomes quite important when a parent is looking for safe birthday ideas for children, advice on nut allergies or other issues where misguided responses or even intentionally malicious responses could pose actual harm.
The frustrations with a single site are appreciated to compound when looking at multiple sites. A user very qualified for a particular subject, say marathons, may be entirely new to a site and therefore even regular contributors may not recognize him or her.
In another case, a malicious or unscrupulous user may develop a plurality of different and outwardly distinct user IDs, thus permitting him or her to present a developed discussion that is appears to involve multiple parties when in fact there is only one or very few. Such an apparent discussion may be nothing more than a soapbox podium. While certainly permissible as free speech, it would likely be very helpful to most people to have some guide to inform them that the contributors to such a discussion were unknown and their credibility therefor open to question.
Moreover, because there are a number of different social networks, each with their own autonomous definitions for users and exchange, social presence throughout the Internet is non-authentic and this is resulting in growing doubt and skepticism over the value and security of socializing the Web. This is due at least in part to two fundamental limitations; 1) centralized social networks generate community response and feedback that is only authentic within the proprietary nature of the system, and therefore, the value of community derived information cannot be integrated or utilized throughout the entire web society; and 2) by failing to support a universal source for defining the authenticity and value of individuals and information, centralized social networks are creating an insecure Internet community that lacks universal integrity.
This lack of social systematic integrity fosters malicious social intent through false accusations, inappropriate feedback, false identity, fraud, and other abuse to personal information, but also hinders Internet functionality through misinformation.
Since the Internet is an open-source architecture, Web social organization is beyond the scope of conventional approaches to social organization and this presents an extremely complex situation to network based (e.g., Internet) social networking organization.
Hence there is a need for a system and method that is capable of overcoming the above identified challenges.